YOUTH IN STUTTGART AND TÜBINGEN

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (his close
family called him simply, "Wilhelm") was born in Stuttgart on the 27th of
August 1770.

His father Georg Ludwig (1733-1799)
born in Tübingen to a family of civil servants and pastors, was an
ordinary revenue officer in the fiscal service of Württemberg (1766
"Rentkammersekretär", 1796 "Rentenkammer-Expeditionsrat").
His mother, Maria Magdalena Louisa (nee Fromm, 1741-1783)
came from a well-to-do family of Stuttgart, home to some of the foremost
theologians, lawyers and high-ranking bureaucrats in Württemberg.
She was well-educated for her time and had sufficient scholastic ability
to teach young Hegel the elements of Latin.

Georg Ludwig and Maria Magdalena married in September 29, 1769.
Hegel was the oldest of their three children (four more children died short
after their birth in 1771, 1774,
1777 and 1779).
His sister, Christian Louisa (1773-1832),
who had worked 1807-1814
as governess for Count Josef von Berlichingen, contracted a nervous disorder
in 1820, and was committed to an asylum (Irrenanstalt
Zwiefalten) for one year, after which Christiane's relationship with Hegel suffered.
(Three months after Hegel's death, she drowned herself). Hegel's brother
Georg Ludwig (1776-1812),
the youngest, died fighting as an officer for Napoleon's army in the Russian
Campaign.

By the age of three Hegel attended German School. By
the age of five, Latin school. He was educated at the
Stuttgart Gymnasium (grammar school) between the
ages of seven and eighteen. He was a serious, hard-working
and successful student. He showed remarkable curiosity, a
wide extent of interests and readings.

At eight, Hegel obtained the complete works of
Shakespeare (18 volumes, in a German translation) from his
beloved teacher, Löffler. Among the Greek writers his
favorites were Plato, Socrates, Homer and Aristotle. He was
inspired by the Greek tragedians, Euripides and Sophocles,
and at a young age Hegel translated Sophocles', ANTIGONE
(in prose, and a second time at university as poem). He
read the NEW TESTAMENT in Greek, as well as Homer's ILIAD.
Among the Latin authors his favorites were Livius, Cicero
and Epictetus, and he also translated some of their works.

Hegel also studied Hebrew, starting at fifth grade,
for two hours weekly. He seems to have learned French in
noon-time elective courses offered by his school. He also
learned English, perhaps from a private tutor, as we find
him reading English newspapers later in Frankfurt. Hegel's
favorite German literature included Goethe's,
WERTHER, Schiller's,
FIESKO, Lessing's,
NATHAN, Klopstock's, MESSIAS and Hippel's
LEBENSLÄUFE. From German Philosophy he studied Moses
Mendelssohn's, PHAEDON, and Wolf's, LOGIC.

Hegel's favorite games were chess and cards. He took
up the habit of snuff. 1783, at age thirteen, Hegel
experienced his first tragedy; he lost his dear and
affectionate mother due to bile fever. Hegel himself and
his sister caught the same disease at the same time, and
nearly died themselves.

His main writing, aside from his translations, was a
diary (partly in Latin) kept at intervals during
eighteen months (starting when he was about fifteen, June
26, 1785 until January 7,
1787, he was seventeen years
old). But the main feature of his studies was his love of
notes and excerpts that he started at this time and
unremittingly collected and preserved. This collection,
alphabetically arranged, contained notes on classical
authors, passages from newspapers, treatises on philology,
histories of literature, arithmetic, geometry, applied
mathematics, physics, morals, psychology and education from
the standard works of the period. These notes absorbed and
integrated raw materials for further elaboration, yet he
was not merely passive in these student writings; young
Hegel also wrote essays expressing admiration of the
Classical world, an admiration he never lost.

The "Stift"(Hegel.Net photo)
When Hegel was eighteen years old, in the
autumn of 1788, he entered at the Stift
Theological Seminary in Tübingen.
However, he soon showed little interest in
traditional theology, as it was taught in
Tübingen: his sermons were boring and he found
more congenial reading in the Classics. He still
believed in the advantages of studying the Classics,
as he proclaimed in his very first essay. He
preferred Aristotle (whom he studied intensively at
this time), Schiller, Spinoza, Jacobi, Herder,
Voltaire, and he held a special fondness for the
writings of Rousseau.

Hegel found the atmosphere in Tübingen
stifling. Stift's strict and artificial discipline seemed
to him a pale heritage of a dismal past. The explosion of
the French Revolution meant for many students and
probably for Hegel, the beginning of a new era in which the
Tübingen Stift held a lower place. Still, Hegel
continued to love learning and to succeed in his academic
career. After only two years Hegel obtained the degree of
PhD ("Magister der Philosophie") in September 1790.
At twenty-three, in September 1793, he obtained the
coveted theological certificate. Hegel's graduation
certificate stated that he had good abilities, but was of
middling industry and middling knowledge. The original
certificate stated that Hegel devoted a lot of efforts to
Philosophy. This was written in Latin as follows:
"Philosophiae multam operam impendit." However, a copyist's
error transcribed the word, "multam," (a lot, many) as
"nullam" (none) in later reports. Many biographies repeat
the later, incorrect version. (See document and comment 46
in Nicolin's 1977 edition of "Briefe von und an Hegel", Vol
IV/1 "Dokumente und Materialien zur Biographie")

Hegel's somber appearance won him the title,
"old man", from his fellow students, yet he always
joined their activities for hikes, beer-drinking and
carousing. As Terry Pinkard remarked in his biography
of Hegel:

"However rebellious against the ways of the
Seminary Hegel became, he remained the industrious,
serious fellow he always was; his friends at the
Seminary referred to him by the nickname 'the old
man' (...). He was not content with simply pub
crawling, carousing and making merry; he was still
reading quite a bit and still remained extremely
serious about learning". (Pinkard, 1996)

A page from Hegel's album at the Tübingen
Stift, where with a message by classmate Georg
Friedrich Fallot: "May God help the old man; Vive
A!".

Hegel gained most from intellectual exchanges with
his famous room-mates Hölderlin and
Schelling. From Hölderlin he learned to love
the old Greeks even more, as the quasi-Kantian theology of
his teachers bored him more and more. Schelling joined
these new ideas. They all protested against the political
and ecclesiastical inertia of their home State, and
formulated new doctrines of freedom and reason.

In summer 1792, Hegel is called the "most
enthusiastic speaker of freedom and equality" by the
members of a revolutionary-patriotic student club
that brought ideas from the French Revolution into
Tübingen. They read French newspapers with
great interest, and Hegel and Hölderlin are called
"uncouth Jacobins" by their opponents. With a group
of like-minded students they study Plato, Kant and F.H.
Jacobi. On July 14, 1792, Hegel, Hölderlin and
Schelling, who had just translated LA MARSEILLAISE into
German, are reported to have planted a liberty tree
on a meadow near the Tübingen Seminary. While this old
story is doubted (see Dieter Henrich 1965: 'Leutwein
über Hegel' in 'Hegel Studien' 3), the story itself
may help to illustrate their political leanings.

"HOFMEISTER" IN BERNE AND FRANKFURT

Tschugg bei Erlach(Aquarel of around 1820)
The estate of the von Steiger family, where Hegel
taught as a tutor for their children

Hegel did not enter the ministry after leaving college, rather, hoping
for some leisure to study philosophy and Greek literature, he became a
private tutor. In 1793, with the help of Johannes Brodhag
(Innkeeper of Schiller's favorite Inn in Stuttgart, the "Ochsen"),
Hegel obtained work in Berne, tutoring the children of Captain Karl Friedrich
von Steiger. In those days a young Magister in Theology from
the middle class could choose between the position of tutor
("Hofmeister") or pastor. Both Hölderlin and Hegel chose
the burdens of this profession.
As Anthony La Vopa argues in his essay GRACE, TALENT AND MERIT:
"one of the standard laments by the close of the
century was that parents inflated expectations were in
absurd contrast to the paltry compensation and demeaning
terms of employment tutors had to endure".

Like all truly important citizens of Berne, Captain
("Dragonerhauptmann") Karl Friedrich von Steiger
(1754-1841) was a
member of the legislature, the Great Council of Berne ("Conseil
Souverain"). He assumed this post after the death of his father in
1785. Both Karl Friedrich and his father Christoph von Steiger
(1725-1785) once belonged to the Bernese Oligarchy, but they became
quite critical of that class and retreated from it. The relatively
liberal ideas of the Steigers fell on fertile soil with Hegel. They
also introduced Hegel to the contemporary social and political situation
in Berne.

According to Martin Bondeli, an expert on Hegel's Berne period, Hegel
and the Steigers had some lively debates about politics and philosophy,
yet overall the young Hegel was pleased to see the Steiger family bestow
their favors upon Science ("Wissenschaft") and Education ("Bildung"),
and to hear their criticisms of Bernese politics.

In Winter, the Steigers would stay in their Bernese Home at Junkerngasse
51, near the Bernese public library. In Summer, they would stay at their wine
farm in Tschugg bei Erlach (in the outskirts of Berne). There Hegel would
make use of their private library, founded by Christoph von Steiger the
Elder (1651-1731). The library had been expanded
by Christoph von Steiger, a statesman who took a special interest especialy
in political literature in ancient times, and from the end of medieval times
up to modern times. This library was a rich source of French and English authors
uncommon in Berne. Karl Friedrich von Steiger contributed less to this library,
although he did later catalogue its 3,871 books. (the full catalogue is revieled
in "Hegel in der Schweiz", edited by H. Schneider and N. Waszek).

In Tschugg Hegel read a considerable portion of this library, with
special attention to Montesquieu (ESPRIT DES LOIX), as well as Grotius,
Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, Locke, Macchiavelli, Rousseau, Shaftesbury,
Spinoza, Thucydides and Voltaire. These authors were also among the
favorites of Christoph von Steiger. We may safely say that Hegel in his
Berne period laid the groundwork for his wide knowledge of philosophy,
social studies, politics, economics and political economy. One can
trace this wide and specialized knowledge within Hegel's famous,
PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT (1821).

In Berne Hegel maintained a focus on the turmoil of political events
in France. His sympathies went soon to the "Girondist" faction,
as he grew increasingly disillusioned with the excessive brutality of the Reign
of Terror. Contrary to many of his contemporaries, he kept an optimistic yet
sober consideration of the changes introduced by the successive revolutionary
governments in France. He never abandoned his earlier positive judgement on
the achievements of the French Revolution.

Hegel's interests in revolutionary politics and his
sympathies for the Girondist cause are witnessed by his
detailed translation into German (accompanied by an
extensive favorable commentary) of Jean-Jacques
Cart pamphlet "on the former political relationship
between Vaud and the City of Berne". Cart's pamphlet
was a violent denunciation against the tyrannical
oppression exerted by the Bernese aristocracy on the
citizens of Vaud. Cart applied the principles emerged from
the French Revolution to the situation of Vaud and
supported an intervention to force and end to the
oppression. Bernese authorities banned Cart and his
pamphlet, so Cart had to flee to France, where he could
count on the protection of members of the Girondist
faction. Later, a military intervention by France gave Vaud
its independence from Berne.

In his translation of Cart's pamphlet, Hegel added a
clear admonishment to all small German princes ("Discite
justitiam moniti"), making it clear that France would have
put an end to tyranny through military occupation, as the
principles of the Revolution were invincible. Both
translation and commentary were published
anonymously in 1798
(when Hegel had left Berne for
Frankfurt. Hegel's authorship was only discovered 1909,
111 years later).

Another factor in his philosophical growth came from
his study of Christianity. Under the impulse given by
Lessing and Kant he turned to the original records of
Christianity, and attempted to construe for himself the
real significance of Christ. The essays he wrote for
himself became noteworthy only when, more than a century
later, they were published by Hermann Nohl as a part of
'Hegels theologische Jugendschriften' (1907,
translated 1948 by T. M. Knox as 'Early Theological
Writings').

One of these essays is a life of Jesus, in
which Jesus was simply the son of Joseph and Mary. He did
not stop to criticize as a philologist, and ignored the
miraculous, in accordance with the long-standing
rationalist movement in theology in the 18th century. Hegel
sought a secret contained in the conduct and sayings of
Jesus that made him the hope of humanity. Jesus appeared as
revealing a unity with God; a unity which the Greeks in
their best days unwittingly rejoiced; a unity to lift
Jewish eyes from Moses their lawgiver who pronounced
sentences upon transgressors, like a Destiny which in Greek
wisdom falls upon the righteous no less than on the
non-righteous.

In Jesus Hegel finds an expression for something
higher than merely Kantian morality. He finds a noble
spirit to rise above the contrasts of virtue and vice, to
rise into a concrete life, witnessing the Infinite always
embracing our finitude. Jesus proclaimed the Divine that is
in humanity, and that cannot be overcome by error and evil.
Only by closing his eyes and ears to the godlike presence
within him, might the individual avoid this witness. In
religious life, Hegel finds a principle to reconcile the
oppositions of the temporal mind. He is also interested in
the general source of the doctrine that life is higher than
all its incidents.

Hegel struggled a great deal with the theology of
his contemporaries. He sought spiritual freedom neither
from rational moralizing like Kant, nor from bold,
speculative syntheses like Fichte and Schelling. He found
his universal remedy in the concrete life of humanity.
Although Hegel goes to the Scriptures and tastes the
mystical spirit of the medieval saints, his concept of
Christ seems to have traits borrowed from Socrates, from
the heroes of Attic tragedy who suffer much yet smile
gently on their way to a destiny of reconciliation. Hegel
portrayed a Jesus further removed from the ancient (Hebrew
but also Greek) theology of punishment of sins and closer
to the ancient (Greek) ideal Individual who is tranquil in
consciousness of unity with God.

During these years Hegel maintained a crisp correspondence
with Schelling and Hölderlin. Hölderlin in Jena had been following
Fichte's career with an enthusiasm that influenced Hegel significantly.
Schelling, the child prodigy, already on the way to fame, kept Hegel abreast
of German speculation. These three friends seemed intent on forcing their
contemporary theologians into the daylight, grudging any aid they might hope
to obtain from Kant's postulates of God, as a crown for the edifice of their
traditional Ethics.

According to Martin Bondeli in his books "Hegel in Bern" 1990,
"Der Kantianismus des jungen Hegel" 1997 and "Hegels Denkentwicklung in der Berner und Frankfurter Zeit" 1999,
Hegel was not as lonely in Berne as sometimes reported,
judging from his letters to Schelling. Rather, as a "practical Kantian", he surrounded
himself with a circle of like-minded men. Hegel met the painter, V. Sonnenschein,
the writer, K. Oelsner (who wrote about the French Revolution), the active Jacobin,
J. Baggesen (friend of Reinhold, Jacobi and Fichte) and the writer, E. von Berlepsch
(friend of P.A. Stapfer). These men were part of the circle of the Bernese Kantian and
Fichtean intellectuals of their time. Sonnenschein taught at the political institute
(200 meters from Junkerngasse 51), where the two most important Kantians of Berne,
J. Ith and P.A. Stapfer also taught. In 1798 Stapfer became temporary Minsiter of
Education of the Helvetic Republic. Since the visit of Fichte in Berne (late 1793),
a Fichtian movement developed in Berne, especially by the help of J. Baggesen. Since 1795,
regular contacts between these young Bernese scholars and the Jenses Crircles around
Fichte were commonplace. All the important heads of the literary society of Jena had
visited Berne and its surroundings since 1796. In the 1790's, Oelser, Stapfer and Ith
translated French writings into German and vice versa, for example, Stapfer translated
Kant into French.

May 1895 Hegel visited Geneve, in July
and August 1796, Hegel and three other tutors made a
pleasant journey through the Bernese Oberland , and
Hegel kept a detailed diary. He was delighted with
the varied play of the waterfalls, but he clearly
beheld the squalor of Swiss peasant life. Glaciers
and rocks called forth no raptures.

"The spectacle of these eternally dead masses
gave me nothing but the monotonous and at last
tedious idea, 'Es ist so.' [it is so]"
(Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin)

Toward the close of his contract at Berne, Hegel
received hopes from Schelling for a post at Jena.
Hölderlin, now tutor in Frankfurt, actually
obtained a tutoring position for Hegel in the family of
Herr Johann Noe Gogel, a wine merchant located "Am
Roßmarkt" in the very center of Frankfurt (
January 1797). The new post gave him more leisure and the
society he needed. Hegel now set his sights on a new goal -
a regular income to enable him to start a more rewarding
academic career.

Hegel continued in Frankfurt his incessant study of
economics and government, including Edward Gibbon's FALL OF
THE ROMAN EMPIRE, Hume, and DE L'ESPRIT DES LOIS by
Montesquieu. Rosenkranz (1805-
1879, Hegel's first
biographer and Hegelian professor of Philosophy on Kant's
former seat in Königsberg from 1833 up to his death )
states that Hegel's interest in economic questions began in
Frankfurt. It was primarily conditions in England that
excited his curiosity, and he regularly read the newspapers
and made detailed notes from them.

His interest in daily politics greatly increased. He
seemed to be fascinated by the relations of Commerce and
Property, especially in England. His excerpts from
English newspapers show that Hegel followed with keen
interest the Parliamentary debates upon the Bill of 1796,
the so-called Poor Laws about public welfare as managed by
the nobility and the aristocracy of wealth as they
attempted to appease the rage of indigent masses. Hegel
also followed the news about the reform of the Prussian
civil law ("Landrecht"). In Rosenkranz's words:

"All of Hegel's ideas about the nature of civil
society, about need and labor, about the division of labour
and the wealth of the estates, about poverty, the police,
taxation, etc., are finally concentrated in a
commentary on the German translation of
Steuart's book on political economy, INQUIRY INTO
THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, which he wrote
between 19th February and 16th May 1799, and which has
survived intact [Hegel.Net: but not to our time]. It
contains a number of magnificent insights into politics and
history and many subtle observations."

Here, as in his criticisms of Kant's ethical
writings during this period, Hegel aimed at correcting
the abstract discussion of a topic by treating it in its
systematic inter-connections. Church and state, law and
morality, commerce and art, were reduced to factors in the
totality of human life from which specialists had isolated
them.

Further evidence of Hegel's attention to
contemporary politics is found in two unpublished essays --
one of which was written in 1798, namely, "On the
Internal Condition of Württemberg in Recent Times,
particularly on the Violation of the Magistrate's
Constitution." The other essay was a criticism on
the German Constitution, probably written not long
after the peace of Lunéville (1801). Both
essays are critical rather than constructive.

In the first essay, devoted to the situation in
Württemberg, his own home country, Hegel showed how
the passivity of the committee of estates in
Württemberg had favoured a policy letting the Court
usurp senior officials as compliant servants. This essay
situates itself in the agitated debate on the deep
Württemberg institutional crisis that revealed the old
Estates and the Duke in conflict.

Essay on the internal Condition in
Württemberg
This is the first page of Hegel's manuscript on the
situation in Württemberg, which should have been
published in 1798
The Estates wished to defend their traditional
right to appoint their elected magistrates as
representatives of Württemberg's inhabitants and
to meet in a Diet. They were split between those who
wanted to preserve their entrenched feudal interests
and those who advised more radical changes, inspired
by the principles of the French Revolution. Among the
more radical advisors was the famous publisher from
Tübingen and Hegel's friend, J. Friedrich Cotta.
Hegel intervenes in the debate with an essay
recommending a system of representation in which the
Diet would have regular sessions. He saw advantages
in changing the Constitution of the Estates, still he
wondered whether such an improved system could work
in the actual conditions of his native province. As
main feature in the pamphlet, Hegel recognized that a
spirit of reform that was open and free is abroad, in
France. Hegel attempted to publish this essay, but he
was discouraged by some friends in Stuttgart who
thought it was too Francophile.

In his second unpublished political essay, Hegel
begins: "Germany is no longer a state." Referring the
collapse of the empire to the retention of feudal forms and
to the continuance of religious animosities, Hegel looked
forward to reorganization by a central power (Austria)
wielding an imperial army, and by a representative body
elected by the geographical districts of the empire. But
such a result, he saw well, could only be the outcome of
violence - of "blood and iron". The philosopher did not
pose as a practical statesman; he described the German
empire in its nullity as a conception without existence in
fact. In such a situation it was the business of the
philosopher to draw the outlines of the coming epoch as
they took shape before his eyes. Even the ordinary eye saw
only the disintegration of the old forms of social life.

His old interest in the religious question arose
again in a more philosophical form. Hegel begins by
contrasting positive religion, natural religion, and the
ideal of an inner upsurge of morality that crowns a human
life, as the one, universal and perennial spirituality,
appropriate for every clime and age. He regarded a positive
religion as authoritarian, imposed upon the heart by
external or political forces. He regarded a natural
religion as the spontaneous development of the national
conscience, variable in varying circumstances, and subject
to change as circumstances change. The perfect religion of
Jesus, said Hegel, became a positive religion when the
ideals of love and reconciliation were presented as
valuable only because Jesus was an authority, and not
because they harmonized with the inner heart of humanity.
Even at this early stage in his writings, Hegel maintained
that philosophy must never abandon the finite in its search
for the infinite. In writings such as these, Hegel
gradually came to regard reason as the clearest means of
grasping the spiritual truth; preferable for philosophers
over representative religion in both its positive and
natural forms.

JENA: STRUGGLING FOR A LIVING AS A PROFESSOR

Natural circumstances eventually helped Hegel fulfill
his aspirations when his father died in January
1799. Hegel received a modest inheritance, 3,154
gulden, that enabled him to think once more of a studious
life. At the close of 1800 we find him asking Schelling for
letters of introduction to Bamberg, where with cheap living
and good beer he hoped to prepare himself for the
intellectual excitement of Jena. The upshot was that Hegel
arrived at Jena in January 1801. An end had
already come to the brilliant epoch at Jena, when the
Romantic poets, Tieck, Novalis and the Schlegels made it the
headquarters of their fantastic mysticism, and Fichte turned
the results of Kant into the banner of revolutionary ideas.
Schelling was the chief philosophical lion of the time; in
some quarters Hegel was spoken of as a new champion summoned
to help him in his struggle against the more prosaic pursuers
of Kant. Hegel's first performance seemed to justify the
rumor; an essay on 'the difference between the philosophic
systems of Fichte and Schelling' (1801, translated
by H.S. Harris and W. Cerf 1977), tending in the main to
support Schelling. Still more striking was their cooperation
in the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie (Critical
Journal of Philosophy), which Schelling and Hegel wrote
together during 1802-1803. So latent was the
difference between them at this epoch that in one or two
cases it is not possible to determine by whom the essay was
written. Even later foreign critics like Cousin saw much that
was alike in the two writers, and did not hesitate to regard
Hegel as a disciple of Schelling.

The articles Hegel wrote in that journal include so
important ones like his "Glauben und Wissen" (July
1802, translated as "Faith and Knowledge" by W. Cerf and
H.S. Harris 1977), a critique of Kant, Jacobi and
Fichte or his "Über die wissenschaftliche
Behandlungsarten des Naturrechtes, seine Stelle in der
praktischen Philosophie und sein Verhältnis zu den
positiven Rechtswissenschaften" (November 1802,
translated as "Natural Law" by T.M. Knox 1975).

The theme of the dissertation by which Hegel
qualified for the position of Privatdozent (De orbitis
planetarum, 1801) was probably chosen under the
influence of Schelling's philosophy of nature. Hegel, after discussing
the Titus-Bode 'law' of distances between Planets, mentions
that with the same right, one could use a sequence of distances derived from a
numeric sequence from Plato. The later sequence did not leave a gap
between Mars and Jupiter, so seemed to fit better to the known sequence
of planets of that time, in contrast to the Bode-Titus law, which needed to
postulate a Planet between Mars and Jupiter. So, Hegel
concluded, if the sequence derived from Plato is correct
(Hegel did not write that it was), than one would not find a
Planet between Mars and Jupiter.

However, Giuseppe Piazzi had already
discovered an object on January 1, 1801,
in exactly that place. Spectral analysis (a method used today to
distinguish between Comets and Planets) was unknown in
those days, so Piazzi could not be sure whether this was a
Planet, a Comet, or some other body, but it was surely a
significant body between Mars and Jupiter. Today we know it
as the first of the asteroids (Ceres). Piazzi was
able to follow this new heavenly body for nine degrees
(about 2.5% of it's complete tour around the sun). H.W.M.
Olbers observed the new object again on December 7, 1801.
Until that date the discovery of a new heavenly body was
still debated. In November, 1802, Berlin astronomer W.
Herschel (who discovered Uranus) concluded that Ceres was a
Comet, not a Planet.

So, in August 1801, when Hegel had qualified with
his dissertation, most probably had read in the newspapers about the discovery
of the sight of the new object (according to the philological addendum to
Hegel Werke 5), but did not mention the new discovery (In a footnote of the
1st edition of his Encyclopedia, Hegel later explicit mentioned that he
no longer considered that sequence of his dissertation). Hegel's later
critics have made this appear to be a scientific error, or worse, a
methodological error on Hegel's part. They tried to make
this the ground of their attack on Hegel's allegedly
apriori philosophy (see also Prof.Neuser's
further researches on this subject).

Hörerliste in Jena
A copy of one of the sheets where the students of
Hegel had to register when attending his courses in
Jena. Above, we can see the date (Summer Semester
1805) and the signature of "Prof. Hegel".
Hegel's lectures on logic and metaphysics in
the winter of 1801-
1802 were attended by
eleven students. After the departure of Schelling
from Jena to Würzburg in the middle of
1803,
Hegel was left to work out his own views. Besides
philosophical studies, where he now again read
Aristotle and Plato, he read Homer and the Greek
tragedians, made extracts from books, attended
lectures on physiology, and dabbled in other
sciences.

In 1804 he lectured on his whole
system to a class of about thirty (among them the
Dutch van Ghert and Gabler, who later became
Hegel's successor as Professsor of Philosophy in
Berlin), although the average attendance was rather
less. He also lectured on mathematics at least
once. As he taught, he continually improved his
original system, and notice after notice of his
lectures promised a text-book of philosophy - which
was always postponed.

At Weimar in February 1805 Hegel was
made a Professor Extraordinarius, and in
July 1806 he drew his first and only stipend -- 100
thalers. At Jena, though some of his students
became attached to him, Hegel was no more popular
lecturer than K.C.F. Krause. The ordinary student
found J. F. Fries
more intelligible. Later in 1805, when several
lecturers resigned because of diminished classes,
he wrote to Johann Heinrich Voss, applying for a
job in Heidelberg, suggesting that his philosophy
might find more congenial soil there. However, that
employment application bore no fruit.

Of the lectures of that period there still remain
considerable notes. The language often had a theological
tinge (never entirely absent), as when the "idea" was
spoken of, or "the night of the divine mystery", or the
dialectic of the absolute called the "course of the divine
life";. Still his view was growing clearer, and his
difference from Schelling more obvious. Both Schelling and
Hegel make much of art, but the aesthetic model of
Schelling was found in the contemporary world, where art
was a special sphere and the artist a separate profession
without a necessary, intimate connection with the epoch and
nation. By contrast, the model of Hegel was found in those
works of national art in which art is not a separate part,
but an aspect of common life, and the artist is not a mere
individual but a concentration of the power of beauty and
the passion of the whole community. Hegel wrote in his
lectures on the history of philosophy, which laid the
foundation for his 'Phäomenologie des Geistes'
(Bamberg, 1807, translated by J.B. Baillie 1910, revised
1931, in a more accurate version by A.V. Miller 1977):

"Such art is the common good and the work of all.
Each generation hands it on beautified to the next; each
has done something to give utterance to the universal
thought. Those who are said to have genius have acquired
some special aptitude by which they render the general
shapes of the nation their own work, one in one point,
another in another. What they produce is not their
invention, but the invention of the whole nation; or
rather, what they find is that the whole nation has found
its true nature. Each, as it were, piles up his stone. So
too does the artist. Somehow he has the good fortune to
come last, and when he places his stone the arch stands
self-supported."

Hegel, as we have already seen, was fully aware of
the change that was coming over the world. He concludes:

"A new epoch has arisen. It seems as if the
world-spirit had now succeeded in freeing itself from all
foreign objective existence, and finally apprehending
itself as absolute mind."

WAITING FOR FAME IN BAMBERG AND NUREMBERG

On October 14th, 1806, Napoleon arrived at
Jena. Hegel, like Goethe, felt no patriotic shudder at the
national disaster, and in Prussia he saw only a corrupt and
conceited bureaucracy. Writing to his friend F. J. Niethammer
(1766-1848) on the day before the battle, he speaks of the
"world-soul", the emperor, and with satisfaction of the
probable overthrow of the Prussians. His manuscripts were his
main care; doubtful of the safety of his last dispatch to
Bamberg, disturbed by the French soldiers in his lodgings, he
hurried with the last pages of the Phänomenologie to
take refuge in the pro-rector's house.

Hegel's fortunes were now at the lowest ebb. Without means, and obliged
to borrow from Niethammer, he had no further hopes from the impoverished university.
Moreover, his life as a bachelor took an unforeseen turn when he impregnated
his landlady and housekeeper. Christiane Charlotte Burkhardt (nee Fischer) gave
birth on February 5, 1807 to Hegel's illegitimate
son, Georg Ludwig Friedrich Fischer. Little Ludwig was temporarily
lodged at the house of Fromann, a well-known publisher in Jena. The philosopher
had insufficient funds to support himself, and now he had to attend to the needs
of his child and his forlorn lover, whom he had no intention of marrying.

Hegel had once before tried to get away from Jena,
so he was glad to become editor of the Bamberger
Zeitung (1807-1808). Hegel wrote no leading
articles, although he kept the journal open amid various
difficulties, overcoming - not without skill and shrewdness
- several hurdles imposed by a strict and ideological
Napoleonian censorship.See his house in Bamerg (German webpage on Hegel in Bamberg)

Niethammer finally intervened; in October
1808, Hegel was offered the rectorship of the
Aegidien-Gymnasium in Nürnberg, a post
which he held from December 1808 to August
1816. (The school still exists today; its name
is now, Melanchton Gymnasium, and it has become one
of the most exclusive in the city, perhaps also
thanks to the fame of its former rector and
professor.)
Ägydiengymnasium in
Nürnberg(Engraving by Johann Abraham Delsenbach -
Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg)

Hegel was called to fulfill Niethammer's
project on the reforming of education and school
organization. Bavaria at this time was modernizing
her institutions. The school system was reorganized
by new regulations, in accordance with which Hegel
wrote a series of lessons in the outlines of
philosophy - ethical, logical and psychological,
published in 1840 by Rosenkranz from Hegel's
papers as 'Philosophical Propaedeutics'
(translated by A.V. Miller, 1986). Hegel struggled
against opposition and conservatism from the
Bavarian administration, still he succeeded both as
an administrator and as a teacher.

As a teacher and schoolmaster, Hegel inspired
confidence in his pupils and maintained discipline without
pedantic interference in their associations and sports. On
prize-days his addresses summing up the history of the
school year discussed a topic of general interest. Five
of these addresses are preserved. The first is an
exposition of the advantages of a classical training, when
it is not confined merely to grammar. Hegel wrote:

"The perfection and grandeur of the master-works of
Greek and Roman literature must be the intellectual bath,
the secular baptism, which gives the first and unfading
tone and tincture of taste and science."

In another address, speaking of the introduction of
military exercises at school, Hegel says:

"These exercises, while not intended to withdraw the
students from their more immediate duty, so far as they
have any calling to it, still remind them of the
possibility that every one, whatever rank in society he may
belong to, may one day have to defend his country and his
king, or help to that end. This duty, which is natural to
all, was formerly recognized by every citizen, though whole
ranks in the state have become strangers to the very idea
of it."

MARRIAGE ANNOUNCEMENT
(From the "Nürnberger Friedens- und
Kriegskourier" of September 19, 1811 -
Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg)
On September 16, 1811 Hegel
married Maria ("Marie") Helena
Susanna von Tucher (1791-1855, not1835 as
written on her gravestone!), the oldest daughter of
the Senator and city mayor ("Bürgermeister") of
Nürnberg, Freiherr Jobst Wilhelm Karl von Tucher
(1762-1813), from an old patrician family of
Nürnberg. She brought her husband no fortune,
but the marriage was entirely happy. As husband,
Hegel kept a careful record of income and
expenditure. His income amounted at Nuremberg to
1,500 gulden and a house; at Heidelberg, as
professor, he received about the same sum; at Berlin
about 3,000 thalers. A year after the marriage, Marie
gave birth to a daughter, who died shortly after her
birth. Later, two sons were born to them; the elder,
Friedrich Wilhelm Karl (b. June 7,
1813, d.1901), rose to eminence as a professor
of medieval history in Erlangen. The younger, Thomas
Immanuel Christian (b. September 24,
1814, d.1891),
named after his godfather, Niethammer,
followed a career as a Prussian bureaucrat, became
trustee of the Prussian state treasure in 1858 and in
1868 president of the Konsistorium of the Evangelic
Church for the Province of Brandenburg. This son of
Hegel did not choose to become a philosopher, and in his
theological position he became one of the leaders of
the Orthodox party. Was this an ironic twist? Historians may ask
whether he intended to challenge his father.

Later on, when already living in Heidelberg,
Ludwig's mother died, and the Hegel's brought Ludwig home
to live with them. Ludwig did not manage to integrate into
his new family, and at age 19 (1826) he was forced to leave
the household. Ludwig enrolled as a mercenary in the Dutch
army and died of a fever in 1831 while serving in Batavia
(Jakarta), only a few months before Hegel died. Possibly
the news of Ludwig's death never reached his father.

Hegel's letters to his wife, written during his
solitary holiday tours to Vienna, Prague, the
Netherlands and Paris, breathe of kindly and happy
affection. Hegel's letters recall happy days spent
together, confessing that, were it not because of his
obligations, he would rather be at home, dividing his time
between his books and his wife; commenting on the shop
windows at Vienna and describing the straw hats of the
Parisian ladies. this is a contrast to the writings of a
professor of a profound philosophical system. But it shows
that the enthusiasm which in his days of courtship moved
him to verse had blossomed into a later age of domestic
happiness.

In 1812 Hegel published his first volume of his
'Wissenschaft der Logik' ('Science of Logic') and the work
was completed by the second volume in 1813 and a third in
1816 (translated by W.Wallace, 2nd ed. 1894, W.H. Johnston
and L.G. Struthers 1929, and by A.V. Miller in 1969)). This
work presented his system for the first time in what, with
a few minor alterations, was its ultimate shape. These
ideas found some audience in the world.

CORONATION OF A DREAM: PROFESSORSHIPS IN HEIDELBERG AND
BERLIN

Towards the close of Hegel's eighth session three professorships were almost
simultaneously put within his grasp at Erlangen, Berlin and Heidelberg. The Prussian
offer included a doubt that his long absence from university teaching might have
made him rusty, so Hegel accepted the position at Heidelberg, as Fries had just
gone to Jena (October 1816).

Only four students turned up for one of his courses. Others, however,
on the encyclopedia of philosophy and the history of philosophy drew classes
of twenty to thirty. While there, Cousin first made his acquaintance, although
they were to become more intimate later in Berlin. Among his pupils was Hermann
Friedrich Wilhelm Hinrichs (1794-1861),
to whose book, RELIGION IN ITS INWARD RELATION TO SCIENCE (1822),
Hegel contributed an important Preface. Among his more unusual students
was an Estonian baron, Boris d'Yrküll, who, after serving in the Russian
army, came to Heidelberg to hear the wisdom of Hegel. Hegel's books and lectures
were both obscure to the baron, who, by Hegel's advice, applied himself to simpler
studies before he returned to the Hegelian system. Other students included Hinrichs
and Carove.

At Heidelberg Hegel was also active in a literary domain. In 1817
he brought out the 'ENZYKLOPÄDIE DER PHILOSOPHISCHEN WISSENSCHAFTEN
IM GRUNDRISSE' (1st edition 1817, expanded
2nd ed. 1827, again expanded 3rd ed. 1830,
again appended with many "Zusätze" from his lectures and manuscripts in
the "Freundesausgabe" of 1840, first translated
into English 1959) for use at his lectures. It is the only exposition of the
Hegelian system as a whole which historians possess directly from Hegel's own
hand. Its first part is an abbreviated version of the earlier SCIENCE OF LOGIC,
called the "ENCYCLOPAEDIA LOGIC", the "Shorter" or "Lesser
Logic" (in German: "Kleine Logik", "Shorter" or "Lesser Logic" (in German: "Kleine
Logik", already badly translated by W. Wallace in 1873) It is followed by the
application of its principles to the Philosophy of Nature. Its third
and last part consists of the Philosophy of Spirit/Mind
("Geist").

Besides this work he wrote two reviews as coeditor (responsible
for the philological and philosophical part) of the "Heidelbergische Jahrbücher
für Literatur" (see reproduction above) - the first on F. H. Jacobi, the other a political pamphlet entitled
'a Criticism on the Transactions of the Estates of Württemberg in 1815-1816',
which drew violent criticism.

On March 15, 1815 King Frederick of
Württemberg, at a meeting of the estates of his
kingdom, laid before them the draft of a new Constitution.
His Constitutional project, labeled as progressive by
Prussian enlightened reformers, contained provisions for a
"bicameral legislation with a popular representation".
Frederick's successor, King Wilhelm I, called a Diet in
order to obtain approval of the new Constitution by the
Estates. The Diet responded angrily to this project, which
would have led to a progressively marginal status of the
power of the Estates, particularly on the question of
finance. The Estates considered themselves champions of the
old order; the traditional German or medieval methods to
political decision and administration. In June,
1817, they
rejected the King's project. A large majority demanded the
restitution of the old laws, though the kingdom now
included a large population to which the old rights were
strange. The King, now upset, tried then to impose his
Constitution by force, bypassing the Estates' decision.
Hegel, in a political paper re-published (on the request of
the republican Friedrich List) at Stuttgart,
enthusiastically took the side of King Wilhelm I.

Hegel's commitment to King Wilhelm's views was
consistent with his political philosophy (see his Lectures
on the Philosophy of Right held in Heidelberg just one year
later, the "Grundlinien" and all following lectures, only
available in German). His position was a progressive one
for Germany, as the philosopher criticized the backwardness
of the bureaucracy and the landed interests.

In 1818 Hegel accepted
a second offer of the chair
of philosophy at Berlin, vacant since the death of
Fichte in 1814. (The hope that this position may lead to
another position less precarious than that of a university
teacher of philosophy were disappointed; Hegel never became
more than a professor.) Hegel was called to Berlin thanks
to the strong support of the newly appointed Minister for
Religion, Education and Health (from
1817-1838), Baron Karl
Sigmund von Altenstein
(1770-1840).

von Altenstein
(From "Hegel in Berlin Preussische Kulturpolitik
und idealistische Ästhetik -
Ausstellungskatalog", Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin, 1981, out of print)
Altenstein was a member of the group of
enlightened reformers who had led Prussia from the
defeat against Napoleon in Jena (in 1806) to the
final victory in Leipzig in 1813. Among them were
Wilhelm von Humboldt
(1767-1835),
Stein
(1757-1831),
and Chancellor (since 1810, in
succession of Stein) Hardenberg (1750-1822).
Their political programme was inspired by the
principles of the French Revolution, and they
believed that the good results obtained through the
Revolution should have been maintained with a strong
and well-directed policy of reforms "from above",
which would have excluded any "democratic"
intervention. They thought that their views had found
in Hegel an insightful supporter from within the
University.

Two different groups angrily opposed the
policies of the reformers.

On one side was the reactionary fraction to
whom any proposal aiming at abolishing the "old
right" of feudalism and the Ancien Régime
was anathema. This faction had very powerful
representatives in the Prussian Cabinet (such as
the Minister of Interior, von Schuckmann), and was
attentively listened to in the Prussian Court,
particularly thanks to the turbulent and
conservative views of the Crown Prince -- the
future monarch Frederick William IV -- whose
influence grew steadily in the mid-1820s.

On the other side, there was a "democratic" faction,
the so-called "German Patriots", who were very well
represented within the University in Berlin, thanks to
Schleiermacher. Fries
was also one of their inspirers. The German Patriots
opposed the program of the reformers in the name of what
they called the "genuine German Spirit". According to their
views, a thorough reform should have come from below, from
the Volk (the People), and without appealing to "foreign"
(i.e. French) principles. Their Romantic vision was
a mixture of direct democracy, individualism, nationalism
and, sometimes, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. They were the
champions of feeling, heart and physical strength as
opposed to rationalism and cold analysis. They were the
champions of spontaneity against written laws and
codification. They were the champions of honor (and duels)
against any modern attempt to reform university and
students' old traditions.

Hegel was strongly opposed to both the reactionary
faction (he remained an admirer of the French Revolution
and its values all along his life) and the "democratic
German movement", to which he opposed rationalism and
philosophy, codification and institutions. It was clear
that his sympathies went to the faction of Reformers
represented by Altenstein and Hardenberg.

The situation took an unprecedented turn when in
1819 a Jena student (Karl Ludwig Sand),
inspired by the ideals of the "German" movement and Fries
philosophy, decided to stab to death the reactionary
Russian spy (and well-known drama composer) August von
Kotzebue. The "Holy Alliance", shrewdly
instigated by Metternich, decided (with the Decrees of Karlsbad) to re-establish
censorship in Germany and keep a close eye to
university professors as a means to avoid the spreading of
terror throughout the Empire.

In 1821 Hegel published the 'GRUNDLINIEN DER
PHILOSOPHIE DES RECHTS' (as volume 8 of Hegel's
collected works ("Freundesausgabe"), with additions from
Hegel's lectures to the paragraphs by E. Gans 1833; 2nd
ed.1840; ed. G. J. B. Bolland, 1901; Eng. trans.,
PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT, by S. W. Dyde, 1896, T.Knox 1952 and,
most reliable, A.V. Miller 1977). The publication of
Hegel's work on moral and
political philosophy (originally due for the early
1820) was delayed by censorship. Hegel's work condemns both
the reactionary point of view (represented by the
philosophies of Haller and the legal theories of
Hugo and Savigny) and the democratic, German
movement. Fries
is stigmatized as one of the "ringleaders of shallowness"
bent on substituting an imaginary tie of enthusiasm and
friendship for the established order of the state.

Hegel's theory was not -- as unwisely yet often
repeated -- a mere formula for the Prussian state. Much
that he construed as necessary to a State was lacking in
Prussia. On the whole, he joined the Reformers. Altenstein
expressed his satisfaction with the RIGHT. A year before,
1820, Altenstein had already appointed Hegel to the Royal
Academic Board of Examiners in Brandenburg; the board that
was expected to reform the Prussian educational system.
Schools were changing, becoming more humanistic,
emphasizing religion less. Hegel enjoyed his role in
reforming an educational system that he had earlier
criticized.

University of Berlin
(From Hans Günther Reissner "Eduard Gans - Ein Leben im Vormärz",
J.C.B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1965, out of print)
The University (Humboldt Universität) is still
located in the same building today. Since 1871, a
small bust of Hegel has been placed in front of it.

During his thirteen years at Berlin, Hegel's
whole soul seems to have been expressed in his
lectures. Between 1823 and 1827 his activity
reached its peak; his notes were subjected to
perpetual revisions and additions. We trace the
shape in which the revisions appear in his
published writings. Those on AESTHETICS
(published by Hotho 1835-38; trans. 1920 by F.P.B.
Osmaston), on the PHILOSOPHY
OF RELIGION (published 1832, 2nd enlarged
edition 1840; trans. 1895 by E.B. Speirs and J.B.
Sanderson), on the PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
(published 1837 by his son Karl; trans. 1858 by J.
Sibree, revised 1899) and on the HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY (published 1833-36; trans. 1892-96
by by E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simson), have been
published by his editors, mainly from the notes of
his students, under their separate headings. Those
lectures on Logic, Psychology
and the Philosophy of
Nature are appended in the form of illustrative
and explanatory notes to the sections of the
"Freundesausgabe" of his Enzyklopädie.

During these years, hundreds of students from all
parts of Germany, and beyond, came under his influence. His
fame was carried abroad by both eager and intelligent
followers. At Berlin, Leopold Dorotheus von Henning
(1791-1866) prepare the prospective students for fuller
initiation by Hegel himself. Eduard Gans (1798-1839)
and Heinrich Gustav Hotho (1802-1873) carried
Hegel's method into special spheres of inquiry, including
political science. At Halle Hinrichs maintained the
standard of Hegelianism amidst the opposition or
indifference of his colleagues.

Three courses of lectures are especially the product
of his Berlin period: those on Aesthetics, the Philosophy
of Religion and the Philosophy of History.

AESTHETICS: In the years preceding the revolution of
1830, public interest, excluded from political life, turned
to theaters, concert-rooms and picture-galleries. Hegel
himself became a frequent and appreciative patron, and he
made extracts from art-notes in newspapers. While on
holiday, his interest in fine art more than once took him
out of his way to see an old painting. At Vienna, in
1824, he spent every moment at the Italian opera
(especially Rossini), ballet and art galleries. In
Paris, in 1827, he attended a Shakespeare play by
Charles Kemble with an English company. Hegel's familiarity
with the facts of art (though not particularly deep or
historical) gave a freshness to his lectures on aesthetics,
which, as put together from the notes of 1820,
1823, 1826,
are in many ways the most successful of his efforts to see
reality in a speculative light.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: These lectures are another
application of his method. Shortly before his death he had
prepared for publication a course entitled, 'Lectures on
the Proofs for the Existence of God.' This was the
highest form of religion, in his estimation. In these
lectures on religion he dealt with all the world religions,
not only Christianity. On one hand, he criticized the
'Rationalist' theologians, who had reduced religion to the
merest modicum compatible with an ordinary worldly mind. On
the other hand, he criticized
Schleiermacher, who elevated feeling to a place in
religion above systematic theology. Hegel's middle way
attempts to show that dogma is a rational development of
what is implicit in religious feeling. Everything depends
on interpretation because for Hegel, reason is the foremost
criterion of truth, and this includes truth in religion.
However, to make this point, philosophy must become the
interpreter and in that sense, arguably, the superior.

This view was in sharp contrast to the new school of
E. W. Hengstenberg, that regarded the Revelation of
Scripture as supreme (e.g. a form of literalism and
fundamentalism). For Hegel this position was an
"abomination," since it was positive, authoritarian, and
removed both the human heart and the human mind from
consideration of the highest aspirations of the spirit.

In Berlin, Hegel finally reached a comfortable
economic position and accepted opportunities to
travel. In 1820 he visited Dresda and
fell in love with the city's Renaissance architecture. He
was accompanied by the historian and poet, Friedrich
Cristoph Förster, a writer of radical ideas who
managed to climb the social ladder quickly (he was
sometimes called "the Court demagogue"), and who later
presented an articulate eulogy at Hegel's funeral. While in
Dresda, Hegel made the acquaintance of the famous German
poet, Ludwig Tieck, with whom he discussed
Shakespeare, although he failed to impress Tieck with his
knowledge of poetry and prose. Hegel also visited a
exhibition of Italian Renaissance paintings, for which he
expressed his enthusiastic admiration.

In 1822 Hegel made a long trip to the
Netherlands and the Lower Rhine countries. He
roughly followed the itinerary of the famous German
Jacobin, Georg Forster. On this occasion, also,
Hegel visited the famous French revolutionary
Lazare Carnot, who had been exiled in Magdeburg.

Hegel also visited Cologne, where he admired
the Cathedral with its medieval German paintings. He
visited Antwerp, Brussels, where he stayed
with his friend, the Dutch Civil Servant, Van Ghert.
He fell in love with the town of Bruges (he would
revisit these same cities when returning from his trip to
Paris).

In 1827 Hegel traveled to Paris and stayed
near the Palais de Luxembourg and the Odéon Theatre.
He was guided through the city by his friend and admirer,
Victor Cousin. Hegel frequented the opera, visited
the Louvre, and admired the face of Paris, comparing it to
his dear Berlin. He wrote to his wife: "Paris is the
capital of the civilized world".

HEGEL'S LAST YEARS IN BERLIN

A Hegelian school began to gather. The followers
included intelligent pupils, empty-headed imitators, and
romantics who turned philosophy into lyric measures.
Opposition and criticism only served to define more precisely
the adherents of the new school. In the narrower circle of
his friends, Hegel's birthdays were the catalysts for
congratulatory verses. In 1826 a formal festival was set up
by some of his admirers, one of whom, Herder, spoke of his
categories as new gods; he was presented with much poetry and
a silver mug. In 1830 the students struck a medal in his
honor, and in January 23, 1831 Hegel was decorated by an
order ("Roter Adler-Orden III.Klasse" the lowest order
available) from Frederick William III (together with 72
others, among them also Schleiermacher).

In October 1829, Hegel was elected Rector of the
University; and in his speech at the tercentenary of
the Augsburg Confession (in Latin) of June 25, 1830, he
felt bold enough to charge the Catholic Church with
regarding the virtues of the pagan world as brilliant
vices, and with giving the crown of perfection to humbler
virtues of poverty, continence and obedience.

However, Hegel's position in Berlin was never the
one (as told by an ill-informed tradition) of "king" of
Prussian philosophy. On the contrary, his political and
philosophical stance was controversial and opposed by the
most important representatives of academia (among them,
Savigny and Schleiermacher). Hegel never made it
through the Royal Academy of Sciences because of the
opposition of these strong figures. As an example of
Hegel's difficult situation, it is interesting to remember
that even relaxing occasions such as the celebration of the
philosopher's birthday in 1826 (see above) were used by his
detractors as means to put him in a bad light. After the
official Prussian gazette had reported on the festival
organized by Hegel's admirers on the occasion on his
birthday, King Frederick William became so jealous that he
decreed that no more reports on private celebrations should
be printed in Prussian newspapers

Eduard Gans
(From Hans Günther Reissner "Eduard Gans - Ein Leben im Vormärz",
J.C.B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1965, out of print)
With the death of Chancellor Hardenberg in
1822, von Altenstein remained the only supporter of
Hegel within the Prussian government. Hegel's
philosophy was also looked upon with suspicion
within the Court, where Hegel was rarely invited.
One invitation occurred in late 1831, when the
Kronprinz himself invited Hegel to dinner. During
this supper, the Crown Prince (i.e. the future
Friedrich Wilhelm IV) attacked Hegel's
philosophy of RIGHT, which was being taught -- on
Hegel's instructions -- by his most talented
student, Eduard Gans. As reported by Arnold Ruge
recalls (see Hoffmeister's edition of Hegel's
Letters, vol. III, p. 472, footnote to letter
#687), the Crown Prince claimed, addressing Hegel
directly: "It's outrageous that Professor Gans
wants to transform all our students into
Republicans. His lessons on your philosophy of
RIGHT, Professor Hegel, are always attended by
several hundreds of students, and it is widely
known that he gives to your own thought a
completely liberal, I would say Republican, color.
Why don't you lecture your students yourself?".

Hegel might have been the greatest philosopher, but
he was certainly not courageous in this case. Confronted to
this direct attack, he apologized to the Kronprinz and
declared that he was "unaware of the content of Gans'
lectures". This is absurd; a sort of humiliating
self-exculpation. Even though Hegel might have never
followed a Gans' lecture directly, it is not plausible that
nobody -- among colleagues or students (including Hegel's
own son Karl) -- had never drawn his attention to Gans'
political orientation or that he had never realized himself
who his teaching assistant actually was.

As for Friedrich Wilhelm III, once a courtier drew
his attention to Hegel's affirmation (only during his
lectures, not in the actually published text of the RIGHT)
that the monarch's power consisted only in saying "yes" and
then "dotting the i", the King angrily exclaimed, "What if
I don't?". (see Jacques D'Hondt, "Hegel en son temps",
Paris, Editions Sociales, 1968 - p. 100).

It is often said as evidence for an image of an
increasingly conservative Hegel during his last years in
Berlin, that the philosopher expressed alarm at the
outbreak of the July Revolution in France in 1830.
While there is some element of truth in this, the
conclusions that the "tradition" has attempted to draw from
it are overstated. In 1830 three different political
revolutions broke out: the so-called July Revolution in
France, which brought to the throne Louis Philippe
d'Orléans; the Polish insurrection against Russian
occupation; and the beginning of the war of independence in
Belgium against the Netherlands. Hegel took a different
stance towards these three major political events.

As for France, Hegel maintained strong relationships
with the representatives of the "liberal" opposition to the
Bourbons in France. Victor Cousin was one of his closest
acquaintance in France. Our philosopher also took the
opportunity to visit, in Magdeburg, the old Carnot,
exiled by Louis XVIII for his revolutionary past. Hegel
speaks of this visit with enthusiasm. Hegel's sympathies
never went to the monarchists and the reactionaries within
the French government. He cheered -- together with Cousin
-- for the victory of the Liberals at the elections held in
France in 1827.

The July Revolution erupted following an attempt by
King Charles X to impose a new, conservative,
Catholic-inspired government in 1829, against the
provisions of the French Constitutional Charte. At the
beginning Hegel condemns the Revolution, as (per his
gradualist approach to political change) an excessive
response to a complex problem. Hegel also feared that the
July Revolution might represent the beginning of a new era
of wars and turmoil, which appeared unattractive to an old
and tired philosopher. As long as the situation developed,
Hegel accepted the result of the Revolution, and included
it in his "LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY" (of
1830):

"For although the Charte was the standard under
which all were enrolled, and though both parties had sworn
to it, yet, on the one side, the ruling disposition was a
Catholic one, which regarded it as a matter of conscience
to destroy the existing institutions. Another breach [that
is the July Revolution], therefore, took place, and the
government was overturned" (transl. J. Sibree)

The poet Heinrich Heine, referring to Hegel's
statements, jokingly called him "the Orléans of
German Philosophy".

As for the revolution in Belgium and the
insurrection in Poland, Hegel expresses towards them
feelings of distrust, seeing in the Catholic and
Nationalist ideology that partially inspired them a
regression towards a pre-revolutionary way of thinking. In
this, Heinrich Heine, a well-known radical, agreed, whose
judgement of both events is all but positive.

One of the last literary undertakings in which he took part was the
establishment of the Berlin 'Sozietät für wissenschaftliche Kritik'
(society for scientific critique) in 1826 with
their annual 'Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik' (1827-1846)
in which he assisted his friends Eduard Gans and Varnhagen von Ense.
The aim of this review was to give a critical account, certified by the names
of the contributors, of the literary and philosophical productions of the time,
in relation to the general progress of knowledge. The journal was not solely
in the Hegelian interest; and more than once, when Hegel attempted to domineer
over the other editors, he was met by vehement and vigorous opposition. Hegel
contributed to the journal several articles, including a critique of Wilhelm
von Humboldt's edition of the Bhagavad-Gita (1827),
one of Hamann's writings (1828) and positive
reviews of books from Solger (1828) and
Göschel (1829).

Hegel's last literary work, the first part of which
appeared in the Preussische Staatszeitung (the later parts
being censored), was an essay on the English Reform Bill
of 1831. It contains primarily a consideration of its
probable effects on the character of the new members of
parliament, and the measures which they may introduce. In
the latter connection he enlarged on several points in
which England had done less than many continental states
for the abolition of monopolies and abuses. Surveying the
questions connected with landed property, with the game
laws, the poor, the Established Church, especially In
Ireland, he expressed grave doubt on the legislative
capacity of the English parliament as compared with the
power of renovation manifested in other states of western
Europe.

<
Hegel's House - Am Kupfergraben 4a,
Berlin
(Woodblock Print of 1870 - Stadtarchiv
Stuttgart)
The house where Hegel had lived since
1820 and
finally died (he had expressed his whish
to die in that house in a mail to his wife
some years ago). It does no more exist today.
In 1831 cholera first entered Europe. Hegel
and his family retired for the summer to the suburb
of Kreuzberg, and there he finished the revision
of the first part of his SCIENCE OF LOGIC
(published 1832). During the beginning of the Winter
session, he returned to his house in the
Kupfergraben. On this occasion a squabble occurred
between him and his friend Gans, who in his notice of
lectures on jurisprudence had recommended Hegel's
Philosophy of RIGHT. Hegel, indignant at what he
thought was patronage, demanded that the note be
withdrawn. On November 14, after one day's illness,
he died quietly, in his sleep. His funeral was
dignified, worthy a person of his importance. He was
buried on the Dorotheenstädtischen Friedhof
(Chausseestraße 126) next to Fichte and near
Karl Solger, in a place he had personally chosen at
Solger's funeral. (On Hegel's death, see also Horst
Althaus' version in 'Hegel und Die heroischen
Jahre der Philosophie', München/Wien 1992)

Hegel in his class-room and the impression he made on
his students is characterized by the report of Hotho:

"When, after a few days, I saw him again in the
professorial chair, I could not at first accommodate myself
either to the manner of his outward address or the inward
sequence, of his thoughts. There he sat, with relaxed,
half-sullen air, and, as he spoke, kept turning backwards
and forwards the leaves of his long folio manuscript; a
constant hacking and coughing disturbed the even flow of
speech; every proposition stood isolated by itself, and
seemed to force its way out all broken and twisted; every
word, every syllable was, as it were, reluctantly let go,
receiving from the metallic ring of the broad Swabian
dialect a strange emphasis, as if it were the most
important thing to be said. Yet the whole appearance
compelled such deep respect, such a feeling of reverence,
and attracted by such a naive expression of overpowering
earnestness, that, with all my discomfort, and though I may
have understood little enough of what was said, I felt
myself irresistibly bound to him. And no sooner, by zeal
and patience, had I accustomed myself to these outward
defects of his address, than they and its inward merits
seemed to unite themselves into an organic whole, which
claimed to be judged by itself alone."

"Hegel am Katheder" (Hegel at lesson)
(Lithography of 1828 by F. Kluger - Schiller
Nationalmuseum Marbach am Neckar)
This lithography is probably the result of a live
portrait, carried on during one of Hegel's
overcrowded lessons.

"An easy-flowing eloquence presupposes that
one has made up one's final accounts with the matter
in hand, and therefore an ability of a merely formal
kind is able to chatter away with cheap
attractiveness, without rising above the region of
commonplace. Hegel's work, on the other hand, was to
call up the most powerful thoughts out of the deepest
ground of things, and to bring them as living forces
to bear upon his audience; and for this it was
necessary that, -often as they had been meditated and
recast through past years,- with every new expression
they should be reproduced afresh in himself. A more
vivid and plastic representation of this hard
conflict and birth-labor of thought than Hegel's
manner of address could not be conceived. As the
oldest prophets, the more vehemently they struggle
with language, utter with the more concentrated force
that thought which they half conquer, and which half
conquers them, so did he struggle and overcome by the
unwieldy verve of his expression. Entirely lost in
his subject, he seemed to develop it out of itself
for its own sake, and scarcely at all for the sake of
the hearer; and an almost paternal anxiety for
clearness softened the rigid earnestness which
otherwise might have repelled one from the reception
of such hard-won thoughts."

"Stammering already at the beginning, he forced his
way on, made a new beginning, again stopped short, spoke
and meditated: the exact word seemed ever to be in request,
and just then it came with infallible certainty. . . . Now
one felt one had grasped a proposition, and expected a
further advance to be made. in vain. The thought, instead
of advancing, kept turning with similar words again and
again round the same point. Yet if the wearied attention
was allowed to stray for a moment, one found, on returning,
that one had lost the thread of the discourse. For slowly
and carefully, by apparently insignificant intermediate
steps, a thought had been made to limit itself so as to
show its one-sidedness, had been broken up into differences
and entangled in contradictions, the solution of which
suddenly brought what seemed most opposed to a higher
reunion. And thus, ever carefully resuming again what had
been gone over before, and deepening and transforming it by
new divisions and richer reconciliations, the wonderful
stream of thought flowed on, twisting and struggling with
itself, now isolating and now uniting, now delaying and now
springing forward with a leap, but always steadily moving
to its goal."

"Even one who could follow with full insight and
intelligence, without looking to the right or to the left,
saw himself thrown into the most strange tension and agony
of mind. To such depths was thought carried down, to such
infinite oppositions was it torn asunder, that all that had
been won seemed ever again to be lost, and after the
highest effort the intelligence seemed to be forced to
stand in silence at the bounds of its faculty. But it was
just in these depths of the apparently undecipherable that
that powerful spirit lived and moved with the greatest
certainty and calm. Then first his voice rose, his eye
glanced sharply over the audience, and lighted up with the
calmly glowing flame of conviction, while in words that now
flowed without hesitation, he measured the heights and
depths of the soul. What he uttered in such moments was so
clear and exhaustive, of such simple self-evidencing power,
that every one who could grasp it felt as if he had found
and thought it for himself; and so completely did all
previous ways of thinking vanish, that scarce a remembrance
remained of the days of dreaming, in which such thoughts
had not yet been awakened."

(The above biography was partially reworked on the basis of
the one published in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" of
1911. All links, additions and corrections by Hegel.Net
authors Kai Froeb and Maurizio Canfora
according to the latest Hegel researches, edited by Paul
Trejo. Many thanks to Martin Bondeli, Berne, and Beat Greuter,
Zürich, for their extensive help concerning the part on
Hegel in Berne. Further suggestions and positive criticism are
very welcome).

General Biographical Resources in the internet

Edward Caird's "Hegel". This is the complete
224-page book, first published in Edinburgh and London in
1883, and now the biggest Hegel biography available
online. Prof.Caird was one of the heads of the
British Hegelians of his time and so the book is a
document of the English Hegel reception of that time in
it's own right. Of course, some of the material presented
is outdated by current Hegel research, but the masterfull
painting out of many colourfull atmospheric notes still
remains.